Flops are a part of life’s menu, and I’ve never been a girl to miss out on any of the courses.Rosalind Russell
Dear Vorticians,
No long-winded exhortations about the ouster of HP CEO Carly Fiorina, clearly the big news item of the week – big enough to make the lead slot on Thursday’s New York Times. (How many outgoing CEOs have earned that dubious honor?)
While stockholders were pleased, I simply can’t decide whether the move was overdue or premature. To date, Fiorina’s big bet on acquiring Compaq hasn’t paid off for investors, a point that was made with resounding force in Carol Loomis’ excellent Fortune cover story presaging the firing. The Feb. 7 piece, dubbed “Why Carly’s Big Bet is Failing,” can be found here.
But Carly’s financial performance was fairly good – actually much better than that of some other CEOs who have held sway for far longer. (For example, how does Disney’s Michael Eisner hang on?)
It’s interesting to read the various message boards around the Web to get a sense of how investors, customers and others are reacting. While there’s little love lost for Fiorina, the armchair critics seem confused about what they want for HP. For some, it’s a vague hope that HP will return to its “engineering” roots or a more collegial work atmosphere. For others, it’s the wish that HP will “move faster” in the market, perhaps by somehow – how? – reigniting the old innovation engine or maybe by tearing the company asunder. Printers here, other stuff there. Others want HP to get out of the “middle” they perceive it to be stuck in – not as powerful and influential as IBM and not as nimble and efficient as Dell. Throughout all of it, however, there is a deep sense that Fiorina fundamentally changed the DNA of HP, and not for the better.
Now the die is cast and HP faces a future under fresh leadership. So, my question to you my dear Vorticians is this: What would you do if you were the new CEO of HP? Where would you take the company and what values, innovations and technologies would you champion? Let me hear from you at mailto:jgallant@vortex.net.
I also wanted to pass along an exchange that I brokered last week between a reader and a company I showcased a couple of issues ago. Vortician Alon Lahav wrote to me about Cassatt Corp., asking, “John, I read your interesting article, and I would appreciate it if you could point out for me the difference between Cassatt’s approach and the approach other companies are taking with grid computing.”
Whenever someone tells me that I’m “interesting,” I simply must oblige them. Flattery will get you anything you want.
If you will recall, Cassatt – launched by BEA Systems founder Bill Coleman – is aiming to help companies make better use of their existing Windows/Linux computing and storage infrastructure by providing a layer of software – called Collage – that knits everything together into an on-demand environment. Coleman claims Collage delivers on the on-demand promise simply and with no retrofitting required for existing systems.
I sent Vortician Lahav’s question to Vortician Coleman and here’s what the Cassatt folks wrote back: “Unlike other grid companies, Cassatt’s approach starts with the perspective that automating IT operations is a requirement for a scale-out environment of commoditized hardware.
“Cassatt delivers an IT automation platform that provides discovery, management, provisioning and run-time virtualization of servers and data. Point grid products may address specific elements of the problem from either a management point of view (e.g. system management tools or provisioning) or from a runtime point of view (e.g. data or process virtualization). However, each point product adds additional complexity to the overall solution. Cassatt’s approach, which is a synthesis of both management and runtime elements, is a prerequisite for automating an IT operations environment that provides simplicity, flexibility and performance.
“Cassatt also provides these capabilities with no disruption to the current environment. Cassatt Collage software supports industry standards throughout the stack. From Gigabit Ethernet at the network layer, to Intel-based servers, Linux and Windows operating systems, and interfaces to standard systems management tools through SNMP & JMX. Cassatt’s management and provisioning capabilities require no change to the underlying systems or applications.
“Cassatt’s Data Virtualization Service is also a key differentiator. It provides high performance “local everywhere” data access to/from any provisioned server without requiring any changes to the application. And finally, Collage was designed for easy use by a systems administrator with 2 years of experience. Most other tools or toolkits for grid environments are complex, and require senior level IT personnel to operate them.”
Thanks Vortician Lahav and thanks Cassatt. Next week, more letters on the proposed merger of SBC and AT&T. As always, you can reach me at mailto:jgallant@vortex.net.
Bye for now.
